Would you buy a PS4 Portable ?

[Bofferbrauer2]

The_Liquid_Laser said:

BraLoD said:

There is a big difference going on.

With the PS3 Sony made a machine that was so expensive they could not price it competitively.

Back then console were still based around unique structures that would differentiate it internally a lot from the competition, and the one Sony choose was not easy to deal with without a lot of comitiment, which ultimately took too long from most devs.

Now both XBOX and PlayStation have very similar structured consoles with minor differences that set them apart. What we heard from both Sony and then Microsoft is very similar. Both systems are very easily comparable to PCs when conversion is at matter and will use mostly the same components.

There is no PS3 situation anymore. There will be two quite similar consoles with some unique things that make them better/worse than each other and what can weight to any being better is the amount of it they are willing to pack into the console. PS and XB will likely both be priced as $500 at launch.

Aside from the hardware being similar and the pricing being probably the same what will weight the most are the games and Sony has Microsoft completely beat on that.

From my perspective there is no hope for XB4 to beat PS5 unless Sony somehow changes a lot of what they are doing now until launch and decide to not eat the price to make it $500 and release it for $700. Not even with the PS3 they did that, they sold a $800 machine for $600.

Making a strong console doesn't mean making another PS3. The PS4 was stronger than the XBO and has been Sony's second most successful console ever.

Even Microsoft knows they are the ones in quite a disavantage here, while they are buying studios left and right to try to compete with Sony's output as their have lost a lot of traction Sony has used the last two generations perfecting their own to now having a good bunch of the best studios and most successful games out there.

So, unless they really do pull a PS3 here out of the blue in the end of their development cycle for the PS5 there is little chance they will struggle, and honestly the only way they can remotely come close to that is delivering a machine priced too much higher than the one from Microsoft, but I hardly doubt that will be the case, MS is already pushing the $500 mark themselves with the XBO X.

It looks like Sony will be consolidating ever more their dominance in the market to me. I think we might even see MS putting their games on the PS5 as they are starting to do with the Switch.

Only time will tell, you may be right, I may be right, we both may be wrong and Apple/Amazon are coming to dominate the market, or Sega is getting back, who knows. But right now I see no reason to expect the PS5 to struggle, honestly.

I am not discounting that PS3 had an architecture that took devs a while to learn.  I just don't think that was the biggest factor in it's failure.  The biggest factor was it's price.  The most common thing that drives up the price is having "power", i.e. impressive specs.

Generation 8 is a unique generation.  It is the only generation where the most powerful console won decisively.  It should not be considered the norm.  And the reason why PS4 won, in spite of being so powerful, was that XB1 and Wii U launched with expensive peripherals that no one wanted.  Price was still a factor, but it was peripherals driving up the price instead of raw power in this case.  Price is always a factor.

The other generations look like this:
Gen 2 - Atari 2600 is weaker than Intellivision and the 2600 cleans it's clock.  
Gen 3 - NES dominates like no other console ever has over the more powerful Master System.  NES uses dated hardware.
Gen 4 - The more powerful SNES actually does overcome the weaker Genesis, but the race is extremely close.  SNES pulls ahead in the tail end when both consoles are cheap enough that price is not as much a factor.
Gen 5 - The inexperienced Sony beats the veteran Nintendo with it's weak 32-bit PS1, while the N64 is 64-bit.
Gen 6 - Gamecube and XBox are both more powerful than PS2.  PS2 clobbers them both and it's not even close.
Gen 7 - People mock the Wii for how laughably weak it is.  Nintendo pulls a huge upset over both Sony and Microsoft.

The story is extremely similar from generation to generation, the weaker console almost always wins, because price is more important than power.  Now Sony is boasting about a very powerful PS5.  That is not a good sign.  That is like the PS3 all over again.  The PS1 and PS2 weren't successful because, "hey, it's Sony so they're awesome".  The PS1 and PS2 were successful, because Sony sold them at such an attractive price.

When the PS5 launches the Switch is going to be at a far more attractive price, and it is going to have a library of games from 3 years of build up.  The PS5 won't be able to compete with that until the Switch is ready for a successor.  (And it might not be able to compete with Switch's successor either.)  That is why they might entertain a portable console.  They need something to compete with the Switch directly.  Otherwise anyone who would prefer the cheaper console (most gamers) are just going to buy the Switch.  

That is what happened with the PS3.  It stalled out of the gate because of the Wii.  PS3 didn't start selling well until Wii sales were dropping off, and by that time the damage was already done.  Sony is setting themselves up for a repeat of this situation.  Their powerful, high priced PS5 is going to go up against the cheaper Switch and they are going to get clobbered.

Just to point out that the Gen 4 had some more competitors. The most powerful one by far of that gen was the Neo Geo, but saleswise it couldn't compete with SNES and Megadrive.

Also, the 64bit of the N64 is achieved in a similar way as the Jaguar did: it has a 64bit bus - but it only worked at half frequency. Everything else was just 32bit. However, it's CPU and GPU were still more powerful than the ones in the PSOne

It also works with Handhelds. Nintendo was consistently the weakest offer - and the bestselling one, as it also offered best battery life.